


Lust and Loathing

by dracoqueen22



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alcohol, Hate Sex, M/M, Pre-Canon, Rise of the Party Ambulance, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 08:49:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12955635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: Hook hates Ratchet, everything about Ratchet, and Hook especially hates how he can't stop wanting Ratchet.





	Lust and Loathing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thoughtsdemise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsdemise/gifts).



> Prompted fic for Jenn that I had a ridiculous amount of fun with. These two over-confident slaggers deserve each other. ;)

Medics are easily the most stressed students in any university on the face of Cybertron, second only to engineers. It should come as no surprise, then, that they indulge themselves in all manner of stress relief. The word debauchery comes to mind, if you ask Hook.   
  
Medics have no standards. They’ll berth anyone with a decent paintjob who promises a night of multiple overloads and ecstasy the likes of which one only reads about in lurid romance datanovels.   
  
And some medics and medics-in-training are the absolute worst. Just barely a few notches above shareware, in Hook’s opinion.   
  
Mechs like Ratchet. The Party Ambulance, which has become his rather distasteful moniker, proving the breadth of his reputation.   
  
A growl builds in Hook’s engine. He sneers as he brings up the public gradeboard and glares at the names listed on it. Once again, Ratchet’s marks outstrip Hook’s own. Always number one, Ratchet is. Which is a fragging travesty. It’s an insult.   
  
Ratchet parties every chance he gets. Sometimes, he staggers to class still half-overcharged from the night before. He frags around to any berth that’ll take him. He’s never found in the library studying for practicals. Worse, he’s somehow the professors’ favorite and friend to everyone.   
  
Everyone except Hook that is.   
  
Here Hook is, working hard, studying diligently, taking care of himself, attending every class punctually, the first to ask questions and write down answers. Yet, he’s always one step behind Ratchet in scores and proficiencies. Somehow, he has no friends.  
  
Well, save the one.   
  
Recurve, Hook suspects, has only befriended Hook out of a sense of pity. He’s the golden spark who can’t stand to see an Empty in the alley or a beggar on the streets. He’s poor half the time because he’s always giving his allotment away to the needy. He doesn’t think to conserve and save like Hook does.   
  
Act of pity Recurve’s friendship might be, but he puts as much effort into it as he would a genuine friendship. He’s the only one to notice Hook staring at Ratchet across the room, dancing in the thick of yet another loud and raucous party, so many hands on Ratchet’s frame that there’s no way to identify to whom they belong.   
  
Hook had sworn he’d never attend one of these degenerate affairs. He had much more important ways to spend his time, and this kind of flippant disregard for propriety is positively obscene.   
  
But Ratchet is here, and curiosity had finally taken Hook by the crane and tugged him into the nearest mass of noise.   
  
He’d found Ratchet immediately. He’d only need look to the biggest clump of lewd behavior in the room.   
  
“Just ask him to berth you,” Recurve says with a loud laugh and a knock of his shoulder against Hook’s. Large enough to nearly bowl Hook over, Recurve is an engineer built to withstand many an invention’s malfunction. “He’ll say yes.”   
  
Hook growls and his visor flashes a glare. “It’s not about berthing him,” he retorts as his gaze finds Ratchet again, finds the tantalizing peeks of scuffed red and white plating vanishing behind groping hands.   
  
Recurve snickers and leans hard against Hook’s side, already two sheets to the wind, like everyone else at this pitiful excuse for a celebration. “Yeah, well, that’s not gonna put you on top either, you crankshaft.”   
  
Recurve has yet to learn that insulting someone you consider a friend is not how friendships are supposed to work. Though Hook assumes he is meant to take such a thing in jest.   
  
He’s not overcharged enough for this.   
  
Hook glares. That kind of comment isn’t even dignified a response.   
  
Recurve sighs and shifts his weight away from Hook. “Fine. You sit here and glower.” He rises to his full height and surveys the crowd. “I’m going to get several drinks and see if I can’t convince that cute tow truck in the corner to take me home. Good luck.”   
  
Hook’s so-called friend doesn’t wait for a reply or a dismissal. He melts into the crowd, snags the first drink someone offers him, and chugs it down. He disappears rather quickly, despite being a head taller than most of the medics around. There are many engineers here as well.   
  
Medics and engineers. Same stock honestly.   
  
Hook sniffs.   
  
He leans harder against the wall and takes a long drink of his high grade. He drains the cube, the burn of the potent and inexpensive blend sitting heavy in his tanks. Primus, it’s foul. But students are poor and cheap besides. They would never spring for the good stuff.   
  
The only good thing is that it’s potent enough to get him overcharged quickly. Overcharged and, he hopes, brave enough to do something stupid.   
  
Hook grabs another mug and downs it so quickly he doesn’t taste the terrible swill. It burns in his intake and heats his tanks. He wobbles a little as he licks a few stray drops from his lips.   
  
There. Just tipsy enough to gather his courage and make a pass at Ratchet, proving that there’s at least one arena in which Hook is superior to him.   
  
Hook pushes himself off the wall and plunges into the crowd, weaving through the thick morass of dancing frames. He stumbles, bouncing from one gyrating pair to another, finding Ratchet again and again through the twisting frames.   
  
Then suddenly, the sea of mechs abruptly parts, giving him a direct path to Ratchet and the mech he’s grinding against. Some white mech with blast stains marring his white and gray paint, obnoxious orange and green stripes making for a horrendous paintjob. He is vaguely familiar to Hook, in that he’s from the engineering department and notorious for being brilliant.   
  
Sloppy and unconventional, mind, but brilliant.   
  
Hook gets within two paces of the mechs dancing with moves just shy of public interfacing, and suddenly, his feet stop working. He hovers and he stares, unsure how to approach the situation now that he’s here. This is the first party he’s ever deigned to attend. What are the social protocols?   
  
Is he supposed to cut in between them, grab Ratchet’s interface panel, and suggest they go somewhere private? (Or public, actually, because a good quarter of these partygoers haven’t bothered with anything like privacy or public decency.) Because that seems like what everyone else relies upon.   
  
Timidity will get him nowhere. Hook is not a shy mech. He boldly goes after what he wants. So he squares his shoulders and prepares to insert himself between the two gyrating mechs.   
  
But then the music stops, highlighting the riotous background noise of laughter and conversation. Ratchet and his dance partner share a lewd kiss, complete with visible glossae, before the engineer untangles himself from Ratchet and toddles away, but not after Ratchet smacks him on the aft. The clang isn’t even audible over the racket of the party.   
  
Ratchet’s gaze falls on Hook next, almost as if he knows Hook’s been staring, and his slag-eating grin widens even further. His lips are already moist from his liplock with the engineer, but Ratchet licks them again.   
  
“Well, if it isn’t number two,” he nearly shouts as he swaggers forward, his windshield marred by paint smears and what looks like sticky energon. He swipes someone’s high grade, and they don’t even protest when he downs half of it all at once. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing someone like you here. Didn’t even know you left your den, come to think of it.”   
  
Anger burbles up in his tanks. Hook forces himself to swallow it down, lest he ruin this night in a sniping match. “It’s open invitation, is it not?”   
  
Ratchet laughs. “Calm your treads, Hook. I’m not trying to throw you out.” He holds the high grade out to Hook, or what’s left of it, and gives the cube a wiggle. “Here. Drink this. You need to unknot your cable.”   
  
Hook grimaces. Who knows who many mouths have been on that cube? “I’ve had two. That’s more than enough.”   
  
“Not for this party.” Ratchet wriggles the cube again and sidles closer, until the first slither of his field is tangible. “Come on. Relax. Practicals are done for the decaorn. It’s time to kick back and celebrate our survival.”   
  
Hook lifts his chin in challenge. “And what of the next practicals?”  
  
“Those are a decaorn away. Plenty of time to study for those. Don’t be in such a rush to boredom.” Ratchet rolls his optics and leans in close, enough that Hook can smell the overcharge stink of him. “Wanna dance?”   
  
Hook doesn’t recoil, but it’s a near thing. “I don’t dance.”   
  
“Then why bother coming to a party? You’re such a dead battery.” Ratchet slides away with a disappointed frown. “I’m going to go find someone who’s actually interested in having a good time.”   
  
Damn it. This isn’t going to plan.   
  
Hook lunges forward, his fingers wrapping around a backswept wrist, stalling Ratchet’s escape. “I didn’t say I wasn’t here to have fun,” he says and lets his field lick out, hot and full of promise. “I’d just rather do it somewhere… private.”   
  
“Is that right?” Ratchet turns back toward him with a leer, and his gaze flicks up and down Hook’s frame like he’s assessing Hook’s abilities. “I have to say, I didn’t take you for the type interested in a friendly ride.”   
  
Hook gives a faint squeeze to Ratchet’s wrist – a warning. “You don’t know enough about me to decide that.”   
  
“Mm. True.” Ratchet twists his wrist in Hook’s grip and leans in closer, sloppy and warm and smelling sweet like high grade and goodies, his field syrupy where it drapes over Hook’s. “You really wanna go somewhere else with me, number two?” His ex-vents tickle into the crook of Hook’s neck and shoulder.   
  
Hook takes a chance and slides his hand up Ratchet’s arm, dragging his field along with it, cutting like a knife through Ratchet’s lust with a thirst of his own. “I intend to ruin you for anyone else,” he purrs.   
  
Ratchet barks a laugh. “Oh, a challenge?” He leans in close, glossa flicking over Hook’s audial in a wet swipe. “Come on then. Let’s go.”   
  
Ratchet dances back, grabs Hook’s hand, and abruptly tugs Hook after him. He stumbles as he struggles to keep up with Ratchet, who is not the least bit clumsy despite the copious amounts of high grade he’s consumed. He tows Hook out of the crowd with single-minded determination, a high-flying grin on his lips.   
  
“Get him, Ratchet!”   
  
“Attaboy Hook!”   
  
“Make that second feel like he’s number one!”   
  
Hook’s face burns with humiliation. He feels like they are walking through some gauntlet of debauchery as the congratulations keep coming, and Ratchet is treated like some kind of celebrity, with the cheering and the backpatting and the shoulder-smacking. Someone even has the audacity to whistle and wink at Hook.   
  
He glares at the idiot, makes a point of memorizing their face – lurid orange and purple paint, blue optics, sensory horns – for later purposes. If he ever sees that mech again, well, they will learn the true meaning of humiliation.   
  
Finally, he and Ratchet squirt free of the crowd, squeezing through a narrow doorway into an equally narrow hallway. Dimly lit, not enough room for two mechs to walk abreast, brightly adorned doors identify dormrooms. Ratchet pulls him to the nearest one, the door sliding open without so much as a code, and they stumble inside.   
  
“Whose room is this?” Hook asks as he gapes at the mess, piles of belongings on the floor and in corners, haphazard stacks of datapads, burnt out emergency bulbs even.   
  
Ratchet whirls him around and backs him toward the berth. “I have no idea,” he says with a laugh, and his hands find Hook’s hips, his field hot and hungry where it roils over Hook’s own. “I’m sure they don’t mind. Maybe they’ll even join us.”   
  
“I hope not,” Hook grumbles as he peers around the room, trying to identify whom it might belong to. At least two medical residents, judging by the number of berths, but there are no designations in plain sight.   
  
“Not interested in multiples?” Ratchet asks with a raised orbital ridge and a squeeze of his hands. “What a shame.”   
  
Hook nearly trips on a discarded mesh cloth, but Ratchet’s grip keeps him on his feet. “Not everyone is as depraved as you,” he snaps, his face heating in the wake of his clumsiness.   
  
Ratchet chuckles and gives him a push. Hook yelps as he stumbles backward, only for the back of his knees to hit the edge of a low berth and his aft to tumble down onto it. Off-balance, he tips back, head landing on a pillow that smells of cheap polish.   
  
Ratchet climbs on top of him without any fanfare, straddling Hook’s mid-section, his aft planted on Hook’s pelvic array. The heat of Ratchet’s arousal wafts down from his panels, tempting Hook’s own array into stirring. They’ve not even started, and Ratchet’s aroused. Easy doesn’t even begin to describe him.   
  
“What you call depraved, I call enlightened,” Ratchet purrs and leans forward, bracing his hands to either side of Hook’s head. His knees dig into the berth, pinning Hook’s hips between them. “Got any preferences for how we play?”   
  
Ratchet’s smirk is positively lewd. And somehow Hook’s hands find Ratchet’s thighs, feels the heat of them beneath his fingertips.   
  
“You say that as though you are not up for anything,” Hook replies, and though it’s meant to be a cutting remark, somehow it comes out flirtatious.   
  
“Well, I have  _some_  limits,” Ratchet drawls and rocks his hips, grinding down on Hook’s panel, lubricant leaking and dripping onto Hook. “Why? What kind of screwy slag are you into, Hook? Hmm?” He leans down, ex-vents hot and wet over Hook’s lips, the tip of his glossa touching the corner of Hook’s mouth. “I think we’re a little too unfriendly for bondage at this stage.”   
  
Bondage.   
  
Ratchet wrapped in beautiful cables, black and gray perhaps, twisting and twining around his frame, displaying him to perfection. Immobile and poised, lewd and defiant, at Hook’s mercy, panting for pleasure, his biolights pulsing to the tune of his desperate vents, array dripping fluids to the ground as he begs for Hook to touch him, touch him  _please_ …  
  
Hook’s engine purrs, and he covers it up with a groan. “You’re ridiculous,” he says, but the images are there and they won’t leave now.   
  
Wind Ratchet up with Hook’s own cable even, feel the medic bound to him, towed to him, forever wrapped around him.   
  
Not an entirely unwelcome notion. It would certainly put Ratchet in his proper place. The over-faced aft would probably enjoy it, too.   
  
Ratchet grins, and his glossa flicks over his lips. “Yeah, but you want to frag me anyway,” he replies with the sort of confident edge that makes Hook want to grind his denta. He rocks his hips harder, and a quiet click of panels opening is the prelude to hot lubricant seeping onto Hook’s groin, painting his panels with slick. “Gonna open for me? Or do I have to coax your spike out? Kinda curious to see what you’ve got packing down there, second.”   
  
“You are a brat.” Hook seethes, but his hands slide up and down Ratchet’s thighs, enjoying the sleekness of his paint. His panels spiral open, his spike eagerly extending, the head of it brushing over Ratchet’s valve, tasting the wet heat gathered there.   
  
“Well, I’m depraved. Ridiculous. Bratty. Any other pet names you got for me?” Ratchet grinds down, the mesh folds of his valve caressing Hook’s spike, painting it in lubricant, little nips of charge darting between them. “Kind of makes me special, doesn’t it?”   
  
Irritation flashes through Hook. He growls, “You’re not special,” and grabs Ratchet by the hips, tightening his grip as strong as any medic worth his specialized hands.   
  
He braces his feet on the floor – thank you cheap and low berth – and rolls, dragging his knees up onto the berth as Ratchet sprawls beneath him, knees obscenely parted. Hook notches himself between them, to the inviting damp at the apex of Ratchet’s thighs. He’s heavier than Ratchet. Stronger, too.   
  
It takes little effort to pin Ratchet beneath him, his spike grinding in the slippery heat of Ratchet’s valve, the head of it rubbing over Ratchet’s swollen anterior node.   
  
“And I’m going to be on top,” Hook pants, need coiling inside of him, engine rising and rolling, lust like a hot clench in his spark. Lust or loathing. He’s not even sure anymore.   
  
Ratchet grins and stretches his arms over his head, totally relaxed, like the depraved mech he is. “Suit yourself,” he says, and shifts, crossing his ankles behind Hook’s thighs, dragging him closer. “I’m not complaining.”   
  
Aft.   
  
He always has to turn everything around, doesn’t he?  
  
Hook growls and grinds against him, his spike slipping and sliding over Ratchet’s valve, teasing his exterior nodes, upper and lower. There’s so much lubricant between them he can hear it squelching. It feels ridiculously good, and Hook’s spike throbs with anticipation, arousal coiling in his lines.   
  
“Need helping finding my valve, second place?” Ratchet asks with a little shimmy of his frame that widens the gaps in his armor, allowing Hook peeks at the delicate cables beneath.   
  
Hook snarls and shifts his weight, hands sliding down to grab Ratchet’s hips. No, he doesn’t need help.   
  
“Shut up,” he grits out, even as he jerks Ratchet’s hips down to meet his, and his spike sinks into Ratchet’s valve in one sharp thrust, all the way to the hilt, valve calipers fluttering madly around his spike and charge assaulting his sensor nodes.   
  
Ratchet moans like the rough treatment is what he’s been dying for, and arches into the touch, his heels digging into Hook’s back. “Nnn. That’s better.” His hips rise, rocking into Hook’s thrusts, demanding more without words. “Want to plug in?”   
  
Hook’s rhythm stutters. “What?”   
  
“You know, hook up?” Ratchet smirks and wriggles his fingers and his hips. “Or have you not gotten the Interfacing Education course yet?”   
  
“I know what cabling means!” Hook hisses as he thrusts deep and grinds against Ratchet’s ceiling node, hoping the jabs of pleasure would shut his rival up.   
  
No such luck.   
  
“Are you sure?”   
  
“Yes!” Hook snarls and shivers as a particularly deep thrust causes Ratchet’s valve to tighten and clench around him, caressing his spike. “I was surprised is all.”   
  
Ratchet arches an orbital ridge. “Because?” It almost sounds like honest curiosity, if it isn’t for the edge of mischief in his tone.   
  
“It’s personal.” Hook’s rhythm stutters again, his concentration stolen by the embarrassment in his admission. “And it’s...” He searches for a word that won’t make him any more humiliated than he already feels.   
  
How can Ratchet always do this to him? It doesn’t take much. A few choice phrases, cutting words, and Hook is stewing in his own special blend of envy, fury, and embarrassment.   
  
“Depraved to ask for?” Ratchet snickers and his hands slide up Hook’s arms, finding his tires and dipping his fingers into the rim gaps. “If you say so. I’m not about pushing mechs into things they don’t like.”  
  
Somehow, Ratchet’s consideration feels condescending.   
  
“Give me your cable.” Hook shifts his weight back to his knees, dropping his hold on Ratchet’s hips. He gropes at his port array, flicking open the panel to withdraw his cable, with perhaps a tad too much force than is necessary.   
  
“Change your mind that quick, did you?” Ratchet chuckles, but his optics are focused on Hook’s dangling cable plug with evident interest. “I’m not sure you can handle my charge, number two.”   
  
Hook slides his free hand over Ratchet’s bobbing spike, giving it a tight squeeze that makes Ratchet arch his back and shiver. “Why don’t you try me and find out?”   
  
Ratchet’s glossa flicks over his lips. He tugs out his own cable, wiggling it in Hook’s direction. “I’ll take that challenge.”   
  
Hook snorts, but doesn’t comment. Their exchange of cables is almost perfunctory, as is the way Hook doesn’t bother to tease as he slides his plug home in Ratchet’s port, sending a surge of charge immediately through. Pride swells in his spark as Ratchet visibly shivers, a warm sigh spilling from his lips.   
  
Hook bombards with Ratchet with several more pulses of need and lust before he deigns to slip Ratchet’s cable into his port with decidedly more care. The little click of connectors coming into contact is unexpectedly arousing, and Hook bites back a groan.   
  
“My turn,” Ratchet says with a smirk, and then a tidal wave of static charge comes surging over their connection, bombarding Hook’s lines with ecstasy.   
  
His knees wobble. He pants for vents as he tilts forward, hands braced to either side of Ratchet’s shoulders, optics flickering. Primus, he’s never felt such raw charge, like lightning caressing his nodes, and going straight to his array. His valve clenches, suddenly desperate to be filled, as his spike plunges deep into Ratchet, throbbing insistently.   
  
No. He’ll not be defeated. Not in this.   
  
Hook gathers every ounce of control and focus. He gathers up the charge Ratchet is sending him and cycles it back, adding his own to the fray. His throbbing spike demands attention, so Hook starts to thrust again, fragging Ratchet with quick, deep stabs of his spike, raking over sensor nodes in a desperate bid to prove, once and for all, who is truly the best.   
  
He claims Ratchet’s mouth to wipe away the smirk, the taunting remarks. He plunges his glossa inside, tasting sweet and tart high grade, and moans as their denta clack together. Ratchet gropes at him, hands gripping Hook’s side, curled on plating protrusions from his alt-mode.   
  
Silence is golden, they say, and in this case, they are right. Ratchet is so much more likable when he’s reduced to moans and gasps and noises muffled against Hook’s lips. He’s ten times more appealing like this, squirming and writhing on Hook’s spike, his charge relenting in the wake of Hook’s unforgiving tide of electric ecstasy.   
  
Ratchet grapples with him, refusing to go down without a fight. They roll across the berth, limbs tangling, frames clanging and colliding, leaving marks of paint behind. Hook is smug, it feels like staking a claim, until he realizes that Ratchet is marking him as well.   
  
He growls and bites at Ratchet’s lips, his jaw, his intake, pulling more gasps and moans out of Ratchet’s mouth. No more words emerge from Ratchet. No more taunts or goads or challenges. Just raw pleasure, the occasional demand for more, harder, faster, and Hook is all too eager to oblige. His fans roar as he plunges into Ratchet again, matching the pulse of his charge across their cables to the beat of his spike.   
  
Static crawls over their frames in bright bursts, lighting up the dim of the messy dorm. Ratchet’s making these noises, little whimpers and sighs, and his field is a hot lick against Hook’s own, trickling into all the nooks and crannies, winding him up.   
  
They roll again, and Hook’s back on top, his hands seizing Ratchet’s hips, his spike grinding hard and deep, assaulting Ratchet’s ceiling node. He feels savage, lips pulled back over his denta, leaving nips and claims on Ratchet’s intake before he seizes Ratchet’s mouth again.   
  
Victory soars into his spark as Ratchet overloads first, his valve spasming around Hook’s spike, his spike spurting against Hook’s belly, his lines surging with charge. Ratchet is gorgeous in pleasure, head tossed back, frame offered in complete surrender to what Hook is offering him.   
  
It’s intoxicating. He clings to it, that sense of triumph, before the taste of Ratchet’s overload along their connection pulls Hook into the ecstasy as well. He buries his face into the crook of Ratchet’s shoulder, takes the spicy heat of him, and spills deep into Ratchet’s valve.   
  
The release triggers a cascade across their cabled connection, sending Ratchet into another overload and pulling Hook along for the ride. The pleasure surges between them, one overload feeding into the other, until Hook feels eclipsed by it. His senses drown in ecstasy, and all sensation dims to the overwhelming electricity of it.   
  
Safety protocols kick in around the fifth-sixth-he can’t count anymore. Hook gasps out a staticky sound even he can’t identify and collapses on top of Ratchet, vents desperately pulling in air, his lower half trembling and weak. There’s not a drop of transfluid in his tanks, and lubricant slicks his thighs. He’d overloaded with his valve, too, without so much as a brush of stimulation.   
  
Primus.   
  
Ratchet squirms and Hook manages one last surge of effort. He pulls his rapidly depressurizing spike free and tilts to the side, landing on his belly on the berth. His spark races, and Hook realizes he should probably get in a comfortable position, but he’s trying to remember if he has feet or not.   
  
Primus, that’s the best he’s ever had. He’d forgotten that being with medics is one hundred times different. He doesn’t know what kind of mods Ratchet has in his valve, but they have to be illegal. Plus, whatever he was doing with his cable array.   
  
And if it had been incredible for Hook, it had to have been even more so for Ratchet, who’d had just as many overloads if not more. Everyone knows the valve mech gets twice as much pleasure. No way would he ever forget this.   
  
Hook drags up energy and turns his head to look at Ratchet next to him. He plants a smug grin on his face, ready to dredge up a taunt or two.   
  
Ratchet groans, his field fluttery with happiness and satisfaction. He stretches his arms over his head and then reaches for their cables, disconnecting them with efficient twists of his wrists. Hook’s own spools back into his array, the panel closing behind it.   
  
Ratchet sits up, one hand diving between his legs to brush over his spike and valve array briefly. They come up damp with a mixture of fluids, evidence of their debauchery. Ratchet snorts as though amused and then Hook hears a click as his panels close.   
  
“Thanks for the ride, second,” Ratchet says, and then of all things, pats Hook on the hip before he scoots off the berth, standing up as though his legs aren’t made of gelatin, like Hook’s.   
  
How can he move after that? How can he stand? Where is he getting the energy from? Hook feels like he could recharge for the rest of the night!  
  
“Stop calling me that,” Hook croaks.   
  
“Why? It’s what you are?” Ratchet’s smirk is condescending. As is the way he looks down at Hook as he redolently stretches.   
  
“Not for long.” Hook glares and manages to leverage himself upright, though his arms wobble. “I’ll surpass you by the time we graduate. I swear it.”   
  
“If you think you can.” Ratchet leans in close, smelling of interfacing and high grade, of challenges and the bitter tang of loathing. His lips are far too tantalizingly close. “I welcome the challenge, second.”   
  
Hook squares his shoulders. “I just showed you, didn’t I?” he demands, sharp and hot.   
  
Ratchet nips at his jaw before he leans back, making a show of deep thought as he taps at his chin. “Eh, I’ve had better. But it was definitely a solid effort on your part. Worthy of a repeat. Four stars easy.” He shrugs. “Just means there’s room for improvement. I volunteer to be your practice dummy.” He winks.   
  
Hook stares at him. The words echo in his audials and in his head, they surge through his frame, melt out through his feet, puddle beneath him.   
  
 _I’ve had better.  
  
I’ve had  **better**?!_  
  
“Anyway...” Ratchet stretches again, groaning long and low, before he spins toward the door, waving a hand over his shoulder. “Thanks for the ride and all, but there’s a party still in full swing, and I don’t want to miss a moment more of it. See you in class tomorrow.”   
  
And then Ratchet swaggers out like he hadn’t just insulted Hook’s interfacing prowess, implied he needed to practice, and then dismissed him in the space of a single conversation.   
  
Hook gapes at the empty space on the floor where Ratchet had been standing. Barely a minute had passed since he’d overloaded and Ratchet’s already gone, meanwhile Hook can barely move, save for the shaking. He’s sticky, exhausted, he reeks of interfacing and overloads and beneath it all, a curdle of shame.   
  
What the frag? He’s had better? How!?  
  
The door opens again.   
  
Hook leaps to his feet, even if it does make him sway, ready to give Ratchet a piece of his processor and then some. But it’s not the top-rated student returning, but a pair of drunken mechs who stumble inside, lips locked and hands indiscriminately roaming.   
  
They collide against a desk, giggling, oblivious to Hook’s presence. He recognizes Recurve immediately, but not the smaller mech plastered to Recurve’s front – a medic, by the brands on him. Newly graduated even.   
  
Some people have all the luck.   
  
“Excuse me,” Hook snaps as he storms forward, eying the narrow space between their flailing limbs and his path to freedom. “Let me get out of the way before you start fragging on top of me.”   
  
They still.   
  
Recurve’s head swivels toward Hook and he blinks in confusion. “Oh, hey, Hook. Wait. Didn’t you leave with Ratchet?”   
  
Hook’s optical band narrows. His engine growls.   
  
“Went that well, huh?” Recurve guesses.   
  
His interface partner giggles. “Must not have, if he’s done already,” they say, singsong. “Guess your buddy here doesn’t have the stamina to keep up with the party ambulance.”   
  
Heat floods Hook’s cheeks. Anger bubbles up inside of him, and all manner of waspish retorts dance on the tip of his glossa, but none of them emerge. What’s the point?   
  
“I’m going home,” Hook declares as he stomps to the door.   
  
Recurve is wise enough to spin his dance partner out of the way, his expression inscrutable. “See you later!” he says, not quite cheerful, but condescending all the same.   
  
Hook ignores him, the door closing behind him and cutting off the sounds of giggling and sloppy kisses, barely a step missing in their lewd dance of courtship. Hook snarls under his vents and storms away from the room and noise and laughter and fun of the party. There’s a reason he doesn’t go to these things.   
  
Never again.   
  
 _I’ve had better_.   
  
The statement lingers in his processor like a bad rust infection, like a flick to the nasal ridge, like his position, ever below Ratchet’s in the rankings, ever in the shadow of something he can’t grasp. So easily dismissed, it builds a fury inside of Hook, one no smelter’s pit can match.   
  
He’ll show them. He’ll show them all, and Ratchet especially.   
  
He will find a method to surpass Ratchet in every way, to leave him soundly behind in the rankings, in the proficiencies. He’ll create methods that’ll make other medics boil with envy. He’ll become a name so remembered, everyone will forget Ratchet ever existed. He’ll be obsolete.   
  
Hook intends to make Ratchet so jealous, so pathetic, that he’ll come begging for an invitation to Hook’s berth, just for a touch of the glory. So he can know what it feels like to be small in the face of greatness.   
  
Yes.   
  
It will happen. It’s going to happen. No matter what Hook has to do. He’ll find a way.   
  
And he’ll crush that overconfident slagger beneath his foot.   
  


***


End file.
